Korea: Time Out For Olympic Play?

WASHINGTON — With the almost daily reports of protest, confrontation and violence in South Korea, it is easy to forget that this same country, scene of America`s next-to-last war, is scheduled to host the 1988 Olympics just 15 months from now.

Indeed, under current circumstances, with South Korea`s future form of government and the identity of its leadership very much in doubt--and with a new surge of domestic disorder getting underway--it is far from clear that the next quadrennial international celebration of sport and (supposed) goodwill can come off without a hitch.

Unless there are dramatic developments promoting domestic tranquility in South Korea in the next few months, the Olympic competitions scheduled to take place in Seoul from Sept. 17 to Oct. 2, 1988, will be as politically troubled as the 1980 games in Moscow and the 1984 events in Los Angeles. They may not even take place at all.

Just a few years ago, the South Korean people seemed united behind the Olympics as an opportunity to show off the nation`s ``economic miracle`` and boost its international prestige. Today, they are so polarized that a key figure in the political opposition, Kim Young Sam, is accusing the regime of attempting to use the games to build the government`s image the way Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics to try to win respectability for Nazi Germany. That is a dramatic--and extreme--comparison, but an accurate reflection of the opposition`s anger over President Chun Doo Hwan`s recent suspension of talks on constitutional reform.

Earlier this spring, Chun adjourned the deadlocked negotiations over a new governmental system until after the Olympics, citing divisions within the opposition and arguing that stability and order are more important than democracy during the build-up to that occasion, when all eyes will be on Seoul.

In the meantime, Chun said, when his term ends next February his successor must be selected under the existing electoral college system. This week, at a nominating convention, Chun`s party is expected to name Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, as its shoo-in candidate.

Kim Young Sam and another leading South Korean dissident, Kim Dae Jung

--partners in a new hard-line, antigovernment party--are furious. Having hoped to usher in and benefit from a new, more participatory electoral system in time for the Olympics, they now threaten to disrupt the games instead. Since their supporters are able to fill the streets with thousands of students on a moment`s notice and since the police generally respond brutally, the results of a sustained standoff, with tens of thousands of foreign visitors packed into Seoul, could be very messy.

How the 1988 Olympics were assigned to Seoul in the first place is, in retrospect, something of a puzzlement. The decision was made at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in the West German resort city of Baden-Baden in September, 1981. The only competition was Nagoya, the automobile capital of Japan, and Seoul won by a lopsided 52-27 vote.

Many Koreans apparently were shocked by the decision. As a veteran journalist in Seoul told Sports Illustrated, ``Most people assumed that the main idea was for Seoul to be a respectable runner-up. We thought the Olympic bid was . . . a gesture toward letting the sports world know that South Korea exists and wants to be taken seriously soon.``

But that was not the way South Korea`s Olympic bargainers and planners saw the matter. They took the games and ran, committing themselves to building more than $3 billion worth of facilities. So far, they apparently are on schedule.

Even without domestic turmoil, there were issues the IOC might have wanted to think twice about before selecting Seoul for the Olympics:

-- Dozens of countries that ordinarily participate in the Olympics, including the members of the Eastern Bloc, have no formal diplomatic relations with South Korea. This could cut down on participation.

-- The unresolved hostilities with communist North Korea render almost any major event in South Korea fraught with uncertainties. There is always a possibility of terrorism, sabotage and military tension.

-- After the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow games in 1980 and the Soviet- led boycott of the Los Angeles games in 1984, it might have been wise to choose a more neutral, less controversial location for 1988. In much of the world, South Korea is perceived to be an American client state, and that is certain to affect attitudes toward these Olympics.

South Koreans insist, however, that none of these, or the threat of domestic unrest, is a serious worry. They point to their successful management of the Miss Universe pageant in Seoul in 1980 less than a year after President Park Chung Hee was murdered, and to the Asian Games there last year (in honor of which the opposition declared a moratorium on protests).

Whether the angry dissidents will be conciliatory again is hard to predict. Choi Sung Il, executive director of the Korean Institute for Human Rights, thinks that after noisy preliminaries, the opposition may well decide to behave like patriots, declining to call attention to the nation`s problems when there is a chance to put its economic achievements on display.

But Lee Shin Bom, an associate of the International Center for Development Policy in Washington and a former prison mate of Kim Dae Jung, disagrees: ``The question will be whether 42 million South Koreans will be satisfied with delaying democracy just because of two weeks of sporting events. I think the government has made the Korean people hate the Olympics.``